2 Mothers Speak On Importance Of Anchoring Furniture After Children Narrowly Escape Tragedy

LOS ANGELES (CBSLA.com) — Deadly to young children, yet easy to prevent, falling furniture is a growing concern among parents. Two mothers who narrowly escaped tragedy have advice on how it can be prevented.

According to the Consumer Product Safety Commission, one child dies every two weeks due to furniture falling on them.

Dr. Lisa Dabby at UCLA Medical Center in Santa Monica described some of the injuries that can happen with falling furniture.

“You can see anything from a broken bone in the limb, you can see broken ribs and a collapsed lung if the furniture falls on the chest,” Dabby said. “You can actually see damage to the heart.”

The Commission also says that nearly 25,000 children are injured every year from falling furniture, averaging around 70 per day.

Between the years of 2000 and 2011, 349 people in the United States died from falling furniture — 84 percent of whom were under the age of 9.

The most common room in the house for such an accident is reported to be the bedroom, followed by the living room.

“I did see a 3-year old who was climbing up to grab something on top of a heavy TV,” Dr. Dabby described. “The TV wasn’t mounted to the wall, and unfortunately the TV came right down and crushed the child and the child did die.”

This kind of tragedy can be widely prevented by securing heavy furniture to the wall, using brackets and straps made specifically for the purpose of anchoring the furniture.